Parents seek schools’ help to reduce cost of books
They want teachers and principals to use less workbooks that can’t be re-used and a system where textbooks that have to be bought can be ordered in bulk to reduce the financial burden.
Margaret Finn is one of the group of parents from more than a handful of Mayo schools who have been meeting since last month to get the issue addressed.
“I have a son in third class and another in fifth but the issue is the same in so many other schools. Their books have cost us around €300 a year for a few years now,” she said.
Ms Finn’s husband, Michael, is out of work and the family from Carnaculla near Swinford is in receipt of social welfare. “We have three older children who are finished school, but for most families, these kind of costs weren’t such a big issue when everything was going well,” Ms Finn said.
She welcomed Education Minister Ruairí Quinn’s announcement this week that he is seeking a meeting with book publishers to raise the concerns of parents and other organisations, particularly about the regular changes to books.
He wants to see if his department can help reduce the number of new editions being published, as more and more families seek help from St Vincent de Paul and other groups with the cost of sending children back to school.
But Margaret agrees with the minister’s belief that schools have a strong role to play by taking a more cost-conscious approach to book selection for their pupils.
“Our appeal is to teachers to consider the hardship people are in at the moment and try to avoid switching from one textbook to another every year or getting children to write in workbooks,” she said.
“They’re all using workbooks in nearly every subject, except maybe English. But they have to be thrown away at the end of the year, even though everybody is hard pressed nowadays.”
Ms Finn also suggested that big savings could be achieved if books were ordered centrally through the Department of Education or by big groups of schools instead of individual orders for the same book from hundreds of schools around the country.
“Schools should simply bring back the old system of children returning books and selling them second-hand to the next class. Or else allow the pupils to write answers in copybooks so the workbooks can be used again, that’s what’s really hiking up the costs for parents — when the kids are made to write in the workbooks.
“So many schools are getting green flags for recycling but so few books are being re-used anymore,” she said.
* Margaret asked for other parents’ groups who wish to widen the Mayo campaign to a national one to contact her on 087 2501450.
